Safeguarding the Future: How to Assess Your Marine Terminal’s Cyber Risk

By January 18, 2024Industry Insights
Industrial port with containers, vessel loading in port

With the uptick in the complexity of operating marine terminals, enhanced technology has become increasingly important for terminals that want to stay competitive. Modern terminal software can increase efficiency and reduce labor costs. But, it also means terminals are a target for hackers looking to cause damage and extort money from terminal operators worldwide.

Since technology use is more imperative than ever before, terminals must know how to evaluate and plan for their own cyber risk.

How to Conduct a Detailed Cyber Risk Assessment

There are six steps to a comprehensive cyber risk assessment.

Step 1: Identify and Document Network Assets

Take an inventory of all network infrastructure and document how your terminal uses them. 

Examples include: 

  • Hardware, including computer terminals, employee workstations, and IoT devices
  • Websites, including vendor access portals
  • Email services
  • Software, including terminal operations systems (ToS), yard management software (YMS), and equipment automation software

Document information like the location of the asset, how it’s used, by whom, the date of the most recent updates or security checks, and estimated threat response timeframes. 

Ultimately, the goal of this step is to have thorough documentation of all internal and external cyber processes to help you begin to understand where breaches can occur.

Step 2: Find Sources of Cyber Threat Intelligence

Next, look for the most recent information about methods of cyber attacks and network vulnerabilities that could affect your operations. Examples of some useful sources are:

Step 3:  Assess Vulnerabilities

For step three, review and document known cyber threats and vulnerabilities. 

Threats may sometimes come in explicit forms, such as in the case of ransomware or clear attempts to breach secure systems. However, internal threats may come from malicious actors or accidental misuse of technology.

You’ll want to look for common indicators of cyber breaches and threats, such as:

  • Unusual login activity
  • Unscheduled or unexpected updates or configuration changes
  • Explicit threats from outside groups
  • Unexpected account or workstation lockouts
  • Antivirus alerts

Marine chief officer using a tablet

Step 4. Articulate Potential Impacts

Using identified threats and vulnerabilities from step three, identify the potential impacts if these threats are exploited.

Document information such as:

  • The role of the system or technology impacted
  • The extent to which normal business processes would be delayed or interrupted
  • Which employees would be affected
  • Whether the service is inside or outside of your organization’s control
  • The estimated response time to a realized cyber threat

Step 5. Determine Risks

There’s no magic formula for determining risk. You’ll need to make ongoing assessments of systems, policies, vulnerabilities, and breach response protocols to accurately assess the risk of each potential threat.

In general, you should try to determine what a high-risk breach looks like for your terminal, then work backward. For example, would a breach of the affected system grind your operations to a standstill, or would it be a minor inconvenience until your backup system could be activated?

For more, check out NIST’s risk management framework webpage.

Step 6. Prioritize Risk Responses

Finally, you’ll want to document and prioritize risk responses. For each potential threat you’ve identified, you’ll need information such as:

  • Who is responsible for risk response
  • What responses might they use (i.e., what controls do they have access to within the system)
  • How long it could take to resolve the threat

5 Effective Cyber Risk Mitigation Techniques for Marine Terminals

Your cyber risk assessment is an ongoing process that will evolve and change as your organization upgrades technology, adds systems, and becomes aware of new threats to your operations. In a way, you’ll always be playing catch up to potential vulnerabilities and new exploits. 

However, this doesn’t mean you’re stuck sitting and waiting for new threats to unveil themselves.

When it comes to mitigating cyber risks, including those you don’t yet know about, there are some useful protocols your organization should follow.

5 Cyber Risk Mitigation Techniques to Implement Today

  1. Regularly update all software
  2. Perform regular employee training to ensure everyone in your organization knows how to keep information and technology secure
  3. Implement physical security controls, such as access control systems, surveillance cameras, and secure facility design
  4. Form a backup and recovery plan
  5. Stay up-to-date and compliant with the latest industry regulations

Safeguard Your Marine Terminal With Tideworks Solutions 

The future success or failure of each marine terminal hinges on its ability to navigate the digital landscape securely. Understanding vulnerabilities, assessing threats, and implementing mitigation techniques can enhance a terminal’s resilience against cyber-attacks. 

However, a comprehensive cyber risk assessment is only step one in a long-term mission that terminals should undertake to secure their technology and minimize risk.

As part of that ongoing mission, terminals should select technology partners that understand cyber risks and how to design software with cyber security at the top of the priority list. 

For more than 20 years, Tideworks has been that partner for our clients, and we stand ready today to help you safeguard and streamline your operations with our suite of marine terminal solutions.

Contact Tideworks today, and let’s build a resilient and secure path forward for your operations.